Research On The Segmentation Phenomenon In Migrant Children's Education

With the massive population movements since 1980s, the education issue of migrant children also called "migrators" has become increasingly prominent. Under the positive impact of "Two Priorities" Policy (charge by the government at the destination and based mainly on public primary and secondary schools), the local government has increased investment and more and more public schools come to open the gate to migrant children. The migrant children has crossed regional span "from rural schools to urban schools" and "from migrant schools to public schools". The "original distinction" on space and household registration between the migrant and the local has been continuously weakening.However, the intrinsic disadvantages of migrant children haven't been remedied effectively by the policy that "Two Priorities" could be flexible while "Nearly schooling" should be compulsory. Owing to the agglomeration and marginalization on spatial distribution, combined with the policy "locals first" implemented by local governments, migrant children generally can only attend weak public schools instead of High-Quality Schools, which makes the weak public schools the actual undertaker of "Two Priorities" Policy. The combination of weak schools and migrant children forms a kind of Bidirectional Weakening Mechanism, which not only exacerbates migrant children's own weakness, but puts the weak schools a disadvantageous position in the school stratification. Such "new educational distinction" caused by both internal and external factors has aggravated class solidification phenomena of the migrant children group. In addition, because of the huge difference in terms of family social stratum and life situation, the culture distinction constantly between local children and migrant children strengthens.This paper is generally divided into five parts. The first part is the introduction which primarily consists of the topic selection, research purposes and methods. This part also summarizes the current research on the migrant children's education. The second part mainly investigates the implementation of "Two Priorities" policy in S district Q city to clarify the realistic background of migrant children's educational distinction. Third part presents the dilemma for migrant children in S district Q city to be enrolled in by three aspects:the educational policy of the inflow city, the stratification of the public schools, the realistic difficulties of the migrant children in public schools. In the fourth part, this paper analyzes the characteristics of the educational policy for migrant children in S district Q City, and expounds the phenomenon of "original distinction", "new distinction" and "cultural distinction" respectively. This paper finally ends up with putting forward policy recommendation from three aspects comprised of consummating "Two Priorities" policy, promoting the household registration reform and enhancing educational equity to resolve the education issue of migrant children.